Contact: Leah Barbour
Photo by: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Mississippi State University will welcome Holocaust survivor Robert "Bob" Behr to campus on Tuesday [March 31] to speak about his experience in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.
The free public lecture will be held at 6 p.m. in Lee Hall's Bettersworth Auditorium, and doors will open at 5:30 pm. Free tickets, required for entry, are available at the Center for Student Activities in MSU's Colvard Student Union, Suite 314, or at the door.
Behr was born on March 1, 1922 in Berlin. Just 11 years later, Adolf Hitler rose to power, and anti-Semitic legislation swept Germany. Behr's father was arrested and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp during a series of coordinated attacks against Jews, Kristallnacht, or "night of broken glass," on Nov. 9 and 10, 1938.
The Behr family was evicted from the apartment on Nov. 29, 1938. The family lived in two rooms in an elderly Jewish woman's apartment until 1942 when the Gestapo arrested the owners.
Behr was arrested two days later, and the family was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp in the Czech Republic where Behr transported bodies for burial. He later worked with a road crew laying railroad tracks until a Czech friend found him work in the camp's kitchen.
The concentration camp, also called Theresienstadt Ghetto, quickly became overcrowded, and the Gestapo began deporting the prisoners to Auschwitz, but Behr continued working in Theresienstadt until the Soviet Army liberated the camp on May 5, 1945.
In 1947, Behr immigrated to the U.S. and enlisted in the Army because he hoped to be assigned to Berlin, so he could care for his mother. His German language fluency returned him to his home city where he interrogated former Nazi personnel.
Behr left the Army in 1952 and joined the U.S. Air Force civil service as an intelligence officer in Dayton, Ohio. He retired in 1988 after 39 years of government service. Behr earned both a bachelor's and master's degree in modern European history and became an adjunct professor at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio.
He has volunteered at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum since 2001.
For more information about Behr's visit to MSU, call the Center for Student Activities at 662-325-2930.
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